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Off the Grid, Without a Paddle (Part 2 of 2)

Last week we finished up with my tech problem partially solved, but in a very sub-optimal way. The toll free number of the overseas company left me with a bad taste in my mouth (curry?) so I tried Microsoft’s support website again, because at least it was free.

There was a place to click for a “live chat”, and I wondered if it would actually work. I had used this type of feature a few times in the past, usually on websites that are trying to sell you something, as it is a good way for the company to answer questions.

What the heck, so I click on OK, and start typing my problem. It took a minute or two to get a reply from “Melinfor” (which I concluded was probably his real name, as the headshot of him did look like someone named Mel).

Live chats are much cheaper for the company than phone calls because the agents can work on a number of different customers’ issues at the same time, since there is usually plenty of downtime resolving these things.

I didn’t mind waiting for Mel to get back to me for a minute or so, because he quickly understood my problem, proposed the solution, and wrapped it all up in under 15 minutes.

He could not revive my old hotmail address, because it is technically impossible to do so. But he got me the next best solution. And I learned a lot of lessons through this ordeal, which I will gladly share.
1. You don’t need to speak to someone to get something accomplished. Technology today allows so many options that do not involve talking on the phone.

When I look back on my insistence on “calling someone”, I am reminded of my father, whose preferred method was to speak to someone, but those were the days when you could easily call and speak to a live person, and the alternatives were going to the store or writing a letter.

2. I don’t miss the spam. When you have the same email address for 15 years, you get a lot of spam. Most of it is easily filtered, but the best side effect of this incident is a lot less crap in my inbox.

3. When you die, you are dead. When I clicked on “remove” for my old address, after already having made the other address my primary one, it was overkill for what I wanted to do. I had not realized the implications of that one click, and after doing it, I was “dead”.

There are some actions that you cannot come back from. For every time I have seen those messages “Are you sure?” when I was deleting something, I would have appreciated at least one heads-up on this one. Moral: You don’t always get a heads-up or a warning. Be careful!

4. What you think you see is not always what it appears to be.

I called a toll-free number for support, which I had wrongly assumed was a Microsoft number. I was stressed by my situation, and fell for a trick, but I have to say that the trick is pretty clever.

If your company has people who can “help” computer users solve their problems, what better way to get them to call you could you come up with?

There are lots of forums online where people ask for tech help, and sometimes those people are looking for a phone number to speak to someone. So you go on these forums pretending that you are just a regular contributor answering a question, and post your number, and people call you.

I just wonder, though, if they put their company name there, along with their number, and told people it was support that they had to pay for, how many calls would they get? Answer: Fewer.

I won’t get fooled again.

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Off the Grid, Without a Paddle (Part 1 of 2)

When you make a mistake and it costs you, the worst thing that you can do, in my opinion, is to fail to learn from it. If you can learn from it, and even help others learn, the cost can become well worth it.

This week I made such a mistake, and it cost me a bit of money, and a LOT of time to clean up. And while the end result is not perfect, it has some added benefits that make up for its shortcomings.

This week I will try to give you a quick “Reader’s Digest” version of the events, and next week I will cover the lessons learned.

I have been working with a Hotmail account since before Microsoft bought them, literally in the last century.

Nowadays you can use their Outlook service with any email address using an “alias”, and I wanted to make my sl@stevelegler.com address the primary one, but I went one click too far, and accidentally deleted my old Hotmail address.

“Ooops! I better put it back”. But it was not possible to do so online. Aaaargh. After a few hours on Monday evening, I gave up and went to bed, figuring I would try to call and speak to someone the next morning.

I could send emails out, but I couldn’t receive any. A few years ago, this would not have bothered me, because when you run a family office, you usually don’t want to be found. But now, as a family business advisor, building a client list, this was a problem.

At about 4 AM, I woke up and could not get back to sleep. Was it because I was “off the grid”? Or was it because I was trying to figure out how I was gonna get back on the grid?

On their customer support website, it is nearly impossible to find a phone number, because it costs them a lot of money to help you that way. They prefer to minimize those interactions, but I was hell bent on calling someone, because I was hoping that they could revive my old email address, and that was the simplest solution.

So I googled “hotmail support phone number” and just like that, I came upon an answer with a toll-free number. I called, and “Jessica” told me this was a “paid support” line.

Now I had a live person, and I just “knew” that my problem only required a quick fix, so how much could that cost, I wondered. But I had that live person and did not want to let go, so I said OK.

Half an hour later, she was finally at the point where she understood my problem almost as well as I did. Another 20 minutes or so later, her tech friend, to whom I could hear her speaking in another language, had supplied me with a new hotmail address, which I could have done on my own, had I concluded that this was my best choice.

Oh well, we are almost done, so I let them finish up. Another 10 minutes with “Harry” to give him my Visa number to cover the $149.99 to pay their company, not Microsoft, but some randomname-noname.com service company.

I felt like I had been had, but at least I had something workable, and they did spend time helping me, and I had agreed to pay.

But my fun was just beginning, as I now had a new Hotmail account that could receive and send emails. However, my other account, where I had all my contacts and dozens of folders of saved emails, could only send emails.

I still needed to somehow “fuse” them together.

So do I call them back, or try another solution?

Hint:
Next week: How Microsoft saved the day, and how I learned that you don’t need to actually speak to someone to get things done.
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Thinking Outside the Family Business Box

Every business needs to be wary of getting into a rut, but inevitably when things are going well, getting complacent can become a habit that is hard to avoid.

A problem that seems to affect many family businesses is “groupthink”, where everyone adopts a certain point of view, and they tend to see everything the same way. Sometimes you can miss things that are happening almost right in front of you, just because everyone is hearing and seeing the same things all the time.

Today’s blog will outline a few ways that you may want to consider that can help you think “Outside the Box”, and bring in a fresh, much-needed perspective.

I remember when I was still in University, my Dad told me that he had heard that many family business experts recommended that children should not be hired by their family’s business right out of school, but only after getting at least 3 to 5 years of work experience elsewhere first.

Unfortunately for me, he also decided that this wise counsel did not apply in our case, and I have lived to regret that still to this day. There are few if any exceptions to this advice from my point of view, and it is not just about the outside perspective that such experience will bring.

Another way for a family to get a different viewpoint is by hiring consultants with specific skills for a certain project. Companies already hire outside accountants and lawyers to handle certain tasks for them, but there are also any number of other tasks that can be given to outsiders who have a special skill set that you do not have in house.

Whether it is an architect for a building expansion or a search firm to find a new key employee, there are lots of opportunities to get input from people who look at the world in a different way.

The Canadian Association of Family Enterprise (CAFÉ) has a program for their members called the Personal Advisory Group (PAG) that creates an atmosphere of sharing between family business owners in different industries so they can share stories and learn from each other.

My Dad was a member of a PAG that outlasted most of the businesses that its members owned, and a few of the members even invited me to join them for lunch after he passed away. I know that he got a lot of great advice from these people who also became good friends. I am sure that he also gave them his opinion on the issues that they faced as well.

Of course a more formal “Board of Advisors” is also a way to get an outside opinion on things in the family business. If you really want this to work well though, a lot of work needs to go into who gets invited to be on this board and what you want them to do.

Simply getting your accountant and lawyer together with one of your golf buddies is really not the way I would recommend doing this, although it may be better than doing nothing.

The last way to get an outsider’s viewpoint that I want to mention is not so much about the business, but more about the family. There are always business issues that affect the family, and family issues that affect the business.

Most people focus on the business issues, where outside help is plentiful and well known, and they hope that the family issues will simply take care of themselves. Unfortunately, they rarely do work themselves out, and more often than not, they get worse with time.

Believe it or not, there are people out there who specialize in the family area, who understand business families, and who can facilitate discussions, offer mediation when necessary, and coaching and educating of the “rising generation”.

And in Canada, IFEA has awarded the FEA (Family Enterprise Advisor) designation to 115 of us so far, and counting!

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The Father-Daughter Ikea Assembly

Last week I came across a Tweet about how sitting can kill you, complete with all sorts of stats that made me think about my own habits and how sedentary they are.

A news report then followed, touting the benefits of treadmill desks that some companies have installed for workers, that has them walk slowly but for long periods of time, with great results.

In an effort to see if something like this was actually doable for me, I looked for a way to try this out with the treadmill that I already have at my office. So it was off to IKEA.

I purchased a small table that attaches to a wall, and brought it to my office. My 13-year-old daughter has assembled lots of her own IKEA stuff, and she offered to come to my office and do most of the work. What follows is our separate accounts of the experience.

His version:

What can you expect from an eighth-grader? Well, when she is MY daughter, I expect quite a bit. And she rarely disappoints, and she did not disappoint this time either.

She assembled the pieces perfectly with no instructions or supervision from me. So now it was time for me to get involved because it was time to attach it to the wall. It was also time for things to begin to go downhill.

“Oh, so those screws don’t come with it?” I asked. “No, I guess we need to go to the hardware store”. Off we went. But first I checked to see that I did have the plastic shields to put into the gyproc to make sure the screws would hold well. Check.

So we get there and I locate some good strong screws, ignoring the packs of screws that come with shields, since I already had those. Let’s go put in these 6 screws and our work will be done.

Except that the big screws did not fit with the shields I had installed, so we had to start over, with four big holes in the wall. We hit another patch of frustration due to one of my screw-ups, the details of which I no longer recall, resulting in more holes.

Long story short, we finally got the wall-mounted table attached, after more sweat (no tears or blood!) and a few muffled bad words.

She gets a 9/10, I don’t know if I deserve a 5/10.

Her version:

My father bought an IKEA desk, and seeing as I’m the IKEA expert of the family, I offered to go to his office and help him build it and hang it up.

When we got to his office, I decided to start off the building of the desk. I’d dealt with IKEA furniture before, so I completed it with ease, but it still needed to be mounted. The treadmill then needed to be turned 90° so that the desk could over-hang properly.

We realized that the screws required to hang the desk were not included in the box, so we were off to the hardware store!

We got big sturdy ones that could support the weight of the fixture. We came back and put in shields, but they didn’t go in properly, but we still tried to hang the desk and failed miserably. So we took them out, and moved it an inch to the right, and tried again. One of the shields broke, another one went straight through the wall.

At this point, I thought we were pretty much screwed. But then, we tried one last time, and we went a bit upward and took our time. It worked!

The desk is now hanging more or less properly over the treadmill (I’d give us an 8/10). I had an over-all great day with my dad, and I’m looking forward to having some feedback from my father about his brand-new treadmill desk.

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Doing the Dishes: A Family Affair

This past week our family was at the cottage, where we do not have all the comforts of home (although we are far from roughing it!)

I was washing the dishes after supper one night, and I had a flashback to my childhood, making me realize how much things had changed in just one generation. I started out thinking about doing dishes, but then thought about all kinds of other family issues too.

When I was a kid, we were the last family on our street to get a colour TV. I remember that we were lobbying our parents for that colour TV, but my mother wanted a dishwasher.

I don’t actually remember if we ended up getting the TV or the dishwasher first, but I do clearly remember the fights I had with my sisters over whose turn it was to dry the dishes each night.

All sorts of memories came back, about my Dad forcing us to create a calendar to keep track of whose turn it was; complaining that there were more dishes on the nights when it was my turn; thinking that maybe if I “accidentally” broke some plates, I might “get fired”.

So here I am at the cottage, washing the dishes by myself, and I never even asked my able-bodied teenagers to join me. Was I just sacrificing myself , so they could enjoy the last few days of their summer vacation, or was I trying to avoid the whining that would surely result in my asking for help?

After I had washed them all, they were drying in the rack, so I just left them there overnight, and put them away the next morning. This made me wonder why I was forced to dry dishes 40 years ago in the first place; did we not have the patience to let nature take its course and let them dry themselves? In retrospect, it seems like there was a lot of fussing over nothing.

But of course the real question that arises is whether we are we spoiling our kids by not making them help out more, or is this just the way people raise their kids these days, or both?

And what about that “colour TV” we wanted, not many families are having that discusssion nowadays, as TVs are becoming passé, with such a variety of screens all over the house.

I remember watching the old Spiderman cartoons with my young son a decade ago, where episodes featured the words “In Colour!” and I had to explain to him that back then, everything used to be in black and white.

We have come a long way with technology, and few would argue that so many of the changes have been positive.

What about the family, and not raising the kids to help out? I am not sure if that is such a good thing. We want our kids to become independent, but we don’t always help them by doing so much for them.

In wealthier families, this can be even more of an issue, as the kids can begin to think that household tasks like mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow, and keeping the house clean are somehow beneath them, as they are all things we pay “others” to do.

Back to me doing the dishes that night, at least my kids were not thinking, “Wow, Dad is doing the dishes!” as if it was something that should automatically be Mom’s job. That is one thing that has definitely changed since my father’s generation.

Somehow, though, I am pretty sure my son is hoping he will end up finding someone like his grandmother, who did view that as part of the woman’s role. But they don’t make them like her anymore, do they?

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Geography 101: “Where” Matters

We all get stuck sometimes. We can be in a groove one day, and then suddenly find ourselves in a rut the next. It isn’t necessarily important to figure out what happened, but it is important to figure out what to do next. It isn’t what happens to us that matters, it’s what we do about it.

I am currently in the middle of nowhere, at our family cottage in New Brunswick. We got here a week ago, and we will be here for another week, and then we head back home and the kids start school, and everything returns to “normal”.

I don’t know what it is about this place, but everything just seems more calm and peaceful here. I came here by myself in January to get my book started, and I think that that was when I noticed how different everything feels here.

When I was doing the CTI Coaches training, I remember being sceptical when I first heard the term “geography”, and the concept that where you are, and even what position your body is in, can make such a big difference. But I can now say that I am a firm believer.

The best thing is that you do not have to drive 9 hours to my cottage to enjoy the benefits that Geography can give you. You could simply walk out the door and walk to the nearest park bench, or the local Starbucks. Or head to the airport and fly down south to sit on a beach, if you like.

The point is, where you are matters. It changes how you see things, how you think about things, how you feel, how you relate to others, and how you think about the future. When you bring along others you will learn things about them, and when you go alone, you will learn about yourself.

If your family is important to you, it makes sense to carefully consider where you get together. If you work in a family business, you probably have already experienced the fact that some people are better at separating “home” and “work” than others. When I started working fulltime for my Dad, I was still living at home, but within less than a year I couldn’t take it anymore and had to move out.

A family retreat is something that some business families try to incorporate into their schedules, as an opportunity to get everyone together, but in a different place, because they realize that “where” matters. The parents’ home is their place and their turf, even if you grew up there. The office is a place of work, and some of the stuff that needs to be discussed is not work related (even if it is some of the hardest work!).

Most families try to choose a resort location, and they try to make sure they have a variety of activities on the schedule, as well as lots of free unscheduled time, to allow people and smaller groups to interact as they please.

Whether your family is ready for this type of bonding activity or not is another question of course, but it will only happen when somebody decides that it is something worthwhile. And then it has to be followed up and repeated in the future in order to get some momentum.

Regardless of whether there are any family retreats in your future, I hope you will try out the geography theory that I am talking about. Notice how things look and feel different depending on where you are. And then when you get stuck, you will be able to try moving to a different space to change your perspective and get back on track.

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Patience: Important, mais le travail avant tout!

Plus tôt cette semaine, nous avons fait faire des travaux dans notre cour arrière par un paysagiste, avec qui nous faisons affaire depuis plus d’une dizaine d’années.

Après le départ des ouvriers, j’ai regardé les arbustes qu’ils venaient de planter, et pour un instant ou deux, j’étais un peu déçu par la petite taille de celles-ci.

Mais avec un peu de réflection, je me suis mis à sourire, en pensant que l’important soit fait: leur plantation. Pour le reste, il ne fallait que de la patience.

C’est important de faire preuve de patience dans plusieurs domaines, et aussi d’adopter une attitude positive, tout en développant notre capacité pour la gratification différée.

Mais la patience, l’attitude, et nos capacités d’attendre des récompenses ne sont pas suffisantes dans la plupart des cas.

Tout comme le paysagiste, qui avait fait le travail (et qui j’ai payé pour le faire), de planter ces nouvelles plantes, il est important de ne pas négliger qu’un certain effort est souvent nécessaire avant de pouvoir attendre patiemment.

Dans une famille en affaires, les parents qui font simplement attendre que leur enfant soit assez vieux pour venir travailler dans la compagnie, sans avoir pris le temps de l’éduquer et de lui préparer, seront sans doute déçus.

De l’autre côté de cette même médaille, le jeune qui s’attend à avoir un emploi, simplement parce qu’il fait partie de la famille, sans faire l’effort pour se faire éduquer et de se préparer pour ses fonctions, risque aussi la déception.

Quand viendra le temps de penser aux questions de succession de la compagnie, et/ou au transfert de l’entreprise à la futur génération, le travail de préparation devient encore plus important que la simple patience.

Si nous voulons une belle haie mature dans cinq ans, c’est aujourd’hui qu’il faut y penser. Ce n’est pas simplement en continuant dans les mêmes fonctions que nous allons éventuellement avoir développé les capacités de leadership et les structures de communications qu’il faudra.

Trop souvent la famille concentre ses efforts sur le côté de la “business” en croyant que toutes les questions du côté “famille” se règleront toutes seules. Ou, ils se disent qu’ils auront le temps d’y penser “plus tard”.

Si vous lisez ces lignes et vous reconnaissez des membres de votre famille, dites-vous que vous êtes loin d’être tout seul.

Mais dites-vous aussi que la patience ne règlera probablement pas la situation toute seule. Vous ne voyez peut-être pas les efforts que vous pouvez mettre immédiatement, mais laissez-moi vous donner quelques indices.

Pour moi le mot le plus important dans l’expression “entreprise familiale”, ce n’est pas “entreprise”, mais plutôt “familiale”. Quand on parle de famille, c’est parce que ce n’est pas simplement une personne, mais plusieurs.

“Ah oui,” je vous entend déjà, “mais chez nous, il y a vraiment seulement une personne qui prend toutes les décisions”.

Mais cette personne, (plus souvent qu’autrement c’est Papa), ne sera pas toujours là, et la famille a l’obligation de se préparer pour l’avenir. Oui, ça prend un effort, mais sans effort, la patience ne suffira pas.

Plusieurs personnes ça veut aussi dire plusieurs liens, et les liens peuvent devenir plus forts et plus serrés avec plus de communication. Parlez-vous des défis de la famille dans 5 ou 10 ans, dans divers scénarios.

Commencez à penser comment vous aller travailler ensemble quand Papa ne sera plus là. N’oubliez pas de parler avec Papa aussi! Il risque de ne pas vouloir en parler avec vous au début, mais s’il devient au courant de vos discussions entre vous, éventuellement il pourrait s’intéresser à vos pensées!

Attendre avec patience, même avec ses doigts croisés, ne donne pas souvent les résultats voulus. Mais avec un peu de travail, d’effort, de communication, de partage d’idées et de pensées, les chances que la patience soit récompensée sont beaucoup plus élevées.

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The Rules of Baseball and Family Business

My family and I just returned from my favourite US city, Chicago, where we had a whirlwind 72 hours that will henceforth be referred to as “Dad’s 50th Birthday trip”, even though my birthday came and went a few days prior to our departure.

We hit all the stops from Navy Pier to Lincoln Park Zoo, from the Architectural Tour on the Chicago River to the John Hancock Tower Observatory, and even hit Soldier Field for a Bears pre-season game on Friday night. And of course we sampled some deep dish Chicago pizza.

But the part that I will not soon forget was the Cubs game at Wrigley Field, which we took in from the Skybox on Sheffield, one of the many places that have sprung up in recent years located across the street from the venue where the Cubs play their home games.

I had always said “some day I want to catch a game from one of those places”, so this trip became “some day”. The game was not memorable for what happened on the field, though, with the Tampa Rays winning 4-0. It was memorable because of the conversations I had with my 13-year-old daughter.

I attend many sporting events, mostly with my son, and only occasionally with her. She had not seen live baseball, and asked me to explain it to her. “Cool”, I thought, “this should be fun”.

The first thing that struck me was that the terminology can be quite confusing to those unfamiliar with the nuances. To her words like “throw” and “pitch” were interchangeable, and anyone who caught a ball was a “catcher”, as opposed to a fielder.

Just like family business, I thought, where succession planning and leadership can become confusing to different people in different positions and with different levels of “inside knowledge”.

As I explained the stuff about 4 balls for a walk, three strikes and you’re out, etc, it also dawned on me that everyone has a limited capacity to absorb new information in one sitting. After a few innings, the explanations became less frequent.

The next time we see a ball game on TV, I know that I will be able to explain a bit more to her, as what I helped her learn on Saturday has sunk in and formed a baseline (no pun intended), and we have something to build on, incrementally.

One step at a time is usually my favourite way to go about things, and when you are getting your family more involved in your business dealings, or getting them up to speed on how you are running your business and how and where the family fits into the picture, it is usually a good idea to go slowly and add more information with time.

The most important parallel that I felt was that spending time with the ones you love, helping them to learn and understand something that you know about and care about, is just about the most rewarding thing you can spend time on.

As a teenager, I played baseball, coached baseball, and umpired baseball. The Expos moving to Washington 10 years ago broke my heart, as I was a fan and had hoped to bring my kids to games. My son understands the game, and I have brought him to games at Fenway Park, Camden Yards, Philly, and DC, but I know that if we still had an MLB team here I would not have waited this long to explain the game to my daughter.

If you have a family business, don’t wait to explain things to the ones you love, start as soon as they show an interest. Go slowly, but then let them decide if and when they want to get involved further, and please don’t push them.

I know that my daughter learned quite a bit about baseball, but I am pretty sure she enjoyed the Katy Perry concert at the United Center on Thursday more than the Cubs game. And I was happy to be there with her too.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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The Rising Generation in Family Business

Jay Hughes is one of the gurus of family business whose thinking on business families and subjects like succession and wealth transfer has been followed for decades.

Yesterday, along with 200+ other attendees at the annual Rendez-Vous of the Purposeful Planning Institute, I had the pleasure of hearing him speak live for the first time, and he did not disappoint.

Hughes talked at length about a variety of subjects, his points of view being described as “spot on” by some, “controversial” by others, and “an evolution of his thinking from just a couple of years ago” when he also delivered a keynote at the PPI gathering.

But one thing with which nobody I spoke to could argue, was the terminology he was encouraging us to use with respect to the various generations in a family business. Practitioners have long used the letter G (for generation) and then the series of numbers to describe the different generations.

While useful for some purposes, the continued use of this system when discussing current and near future issues can lead to plenty of negative connotations, and the entire missing of the point of much of the exercise.

You see, it is all well and good to say that XYZ-company is currently being managed by G2, and the founder (G1) has recently passed away, and some members of the cousin consortium (G3) are currently beginning to join the operations while others are starting college.

But with this numbering system, if I am born into G2, I will always be a G2, and my kids will be G3 and my grandkids G4. The usefulness of this nomenclature is limited, as it describes people in a static fashion, within their family/company only.

If I have a family client being run by G3, with G4 up and coming through the ranks, that G4 will have more in common with another client where the founding G1 is running the show and G2 is preparing to take more control. The G4 and G2 labels lose their benefit very quickly.

So here comes the “Rising Generation” to the rescue. Hughes pointed out that when we refer to the rising generation, it helps keep everyone focussed on the fact that every person, and hence every family, and every business, has a life cycle.

Some founders need to be reminded that they will not live forever. If they aspire to have the business continue to future generations, there will be some work required to instill the changes in leadership from the current generation to the next, and then from that one to the following one.

They do not have numbers in common as we repeat the cycle, but what we clearly do have is a sequence of “rising generations” whose roles, challenges, and responsibilites resemble each other in sequence, scope, and detail.

Any vocabulary that helps emphasize the importance of involving the next generation is a plus.

I recall about a year ago, when first hearing the term “continuity planning” to replace the worn out and misconstrued “succession planning”, I felt compelled to write a blog about it.

Once again, I am compelled to show my support for new terminology, so let’s hear it for the “rising generation”.

And here is hoping that many families take this to heart and will also be able to soon say “let’s hear it for the rising generation” when speaking of how well their up-and-coming family members are succeeding in leadership roles in their family enterprises.

And here is to family business advisors use of the term to keep the rising generation at the top of the agenda in all of their work, for the good of the business, and the good of the family.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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I Got My New Puppy! (My book is out)

Metaphors and analogies can be very powerful ways to explain concepts to people and to make certain points that are difficult to get across in other ways. I have a tendency to try to come up with a parallel story whenever I am trying to wrap my head around something new, if only to help me understand how things are connected together.

So this week’s blog is nothing new for me, but it may seem like a stretch to some. I came up with this one during a recent meeting with my business coach, Melissa, when she asked me how I felt now that my book is finally out.

Like any good coach, she asks great questions and listens without judgment to what I say, and when I get on a roll, she stays out of the way and lets me run with it.

I told her I felt like I just brought home a new puppy. What I meant was that I was thrilled that the day finally arrived, and this new addition was going to make my life so much more fun and interesting. But it also meant that everything was now different, and the work was only beginning.

About this time last year, I decided that I wanted to get a puppy in time for my 50th birthday, which is now only a week away. I spent the next couple of months trying to figure out what breed made sense for me. The parallel story is that I decided to write a book, and I knew it was going to be about family business, but I had not figured out the theme or the point of view yet.

A few months later, I had settled on the breed, and figured out the title, SHIFT your Family Business (Stop working IN your family business, Start working ON your business family). So at this point I had chosen both the breed and the breeder.

In January, I headed for the cottage for a little over a week, and returned with the outline, the first two chapters written, and all of the content for the rest of the book on a couple of hundred index cards. The doggy momma (tempted to use the B-word) was now pregnant, and I had a due date.

The pregnancy went well but felt long at times. There were some review steps with the publisher that I really did not understand, and I finally okayed the final print version about 6 weeks ago. The puppy was born, but I needed to wait until it was weaned from its mother before I could bring it home.

Two weeks ago, while on vacation in Europe, I got an email that told me that the puppy/book was now available. I immediately ordered the Kindle version, just to make sure that it actually worked and looked like I thought it should. (It did).

I then ordered a few copies, just to make sure that they would be delivered and that the book actually existed. They arrived a couple of days after we got back. Wow, cool, I got to hold my book in my own hands, what a feeling.

People congratulated me on the accomplishment, which was also cool.

But now the work truly begins. This puppy needs to be trained, it needs to get into the big dog shows, it needs to make a lot of new friends, it needs to have people like it and say nice things about it and it needs a lot of people to tell other people about it.

The fun and the work are just beginning. I just hope it doesn’t pee on the carpet too often.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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